Not exactly a village, but it takes quite a few bad asses

I’m doing this Creative Turn thing as a solo project. It’s an exhausting racket. A labor of love that often feels like it has an emphasis on the labor part. (Don’t worry… this isn’t going to turn into a request for $$$!) I spend hours and hours in my attic working through the edits of the audio and the video. I’m the one learning how to stumble my way through tools like Final Cut Pro X at night when my family is asleep. I’m the one paying for the site and servers and services to make this thing work. I’m the one who can’t sleep, worrying about whether spending all this time on these projects is going to feel meaningful in the end, or if it will kill me. I’m on this sinking ship alone.

But that’s a dishonest story. There are a tuches-load of people involved in my so-called solo project. What about all the people who are willing to take the time to let me stumble through an awkward interview with them? And the people who listen and watch and promote this on Facebook or Twitter? And of course there is my wife (to be featured in a future podcast episode!), who listens so thoughtfully to my chatter about this damn project every day and whom I ask to watch early incarnations of my videos to see if they have emotional power or if they are incomprehensible (usually a mixture of both). There is my friend Kristen, who spent hours listening to the raw audio content from the first few recordings to see if the conversations seemed to capture the gist of what I’m trying to do with this series. And who constantly helps me process all these things I worry about. There is my buddy Michael Schechter who helped me birth this project (does that make him the midwife?). There is my brother, who not only helped me film the scene with rubber cockroaches, but is so satisfyingly honest with me if he thinks something can be improved. There is my friend Kat who shares my obsession with podcasts and comedians, and tolerates hearing about my insecurities every week. And what would a Yuvi story be without mentioning my therapist? She has helped me think through this stuff too. Even though I apologize for talking about it each visit. And of course, there is my dear friend, Anne, who knows exactly when to call bullshit on me in the most satisfying and loving way. Even when she is going through tremendous things in her own life, she takes time to lovingly do this.

I could go on.

And these are just the people who helped me recently on this one project. I can’t even fathom how to make an equivalent list for the solo project that is known as my novel-in-progress (or also known as: the other thing that is going to kill me) because there are just way too many people in too many phases of its development to start naming names. And also, it is too not-yet-ready for me to get cocky about thanking people. That damn thing is taking me forever…

So what’s this all mean? What the hell is my point?

Well, at least for me, it’s a reminder that I’m constantly both more alone and less alone than I realize. And that I should appreciate both aspects to this more-and-less loneliness.

Next Week’s Guest: Kristen Forbes

I originally had a more overt segue into next week’s guest, but I didn’t like the segue. It didn’t feel natural. So, to hell with the segue! Fuck the segue! Let me just come right out and say it: next week, I talk to my friend Kristen Forbes. You might recognize her from my reference to her five paragraphs ago. Or else from her essay at the Rumpus about online dating. Or else from her essay about her eating disorder at Role/Reboot. Or else from the many other things she has written. Anyway, it’s a fun conversation about how she is able to write such well-crafted stories about such raw emotions. Join us.